Good Friday 2012

April 5, 2012
We gather together this day, as we have been doing at other times during this Holy Week, and the gift of this week is our corporate practice of holy remembering. This holy remembering means telling the story, remembering, and in some mysterious way participating in the story of God’s salvation of all people, past, present, and future. Holy remembering means recalling the power of the stories of the past, and through our engagement, participation, and giving our lives over to them, God makes present the power and the reality of that past event in our current life together.
Through this holy remembering, we are, in some mysterious way, participating in the story and receiving God’s blessings. As Tom said last night in his sermon, “What was real then is as real in this moment as then.”i
Our focus on what we are remembering shifts slightly with the progression of Holy Week. Last night, we remembered how we are slaves in Egypt, eating our hurried Passover meal, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. We remembered how Jesus kneels and washes our feet, how he claims us as his disciples when we show love to others. We remembered the Last Supper and how we participate in that communion with Jesus and all the saints week after week after week, as we “do this in remembrance” of Jesus.
And today, we remember and we participate in Jesus’s betrayal. We remember and witness how he calls upon God in his suffering, and God does not intervene. We remember and acknowledge how our own actions and decisions to “turn to our own way” cause Jesus’s suffering and the suffering of others in this world. Today, we remember how it feels to lose everything. We remember that sometimes it seems that the darkness wins.
Recently I read a French parable that speaks to another essential part of our remembering this day. It is a parable that speaks of unbreakable (and almost unbearable) sacrificial love; “a heart like Jesus—ready to love to the end and even give life.”ii “A widowed mother had an only son whom she cherished. Her tireless loving care was repaid with ingratitude. Heartless wretch that he was, heedless of her needs, time and again, he left her, only to return when his pockets were empty and he was hungry. Each time, she would welcome him and supply his needs at cost to herself. Eventually, his selfish greed had stripped her of everything she had. On his return and finding her unable to give him what he wanted, he was furious and in anger tore her heart from her breast and in sheer contempt threw it on the ground. As he ran to the door, he fell over the heart, and the heart said: ‘Have you hurt yourself, my son?’” iii
In some ways, it is a horrible little story… and yet today it reminds us that in remembering Jesus crucifixion we remember and witness the heart of God, which we have ripped out, tripped over, and still God offers us love, compassion, forgiveness, care, and nurture.
Today, let us remember this heart of God that is fully revealed in Jesus’s death on the cross. Let us remember the ocean of God’s grace that surrounds us even now. Let us remember that the darkness will not be forever. Let us remember that sometimes there must be death before there can be new life. Let us remember and hold fast to our hope, for the one who has promised is faithful.

i.The Rev. Tom Slawson. Sermon at St Peter’s by-the-Sea; Maundy Thursday April 5, 2012
ii.Ibid.
iii.Burrows, Ruth. Love Unknown. Continuum: London, 2011. P 134.